Design and Functionality

Corsair H100 is the company’s flagship cooling system. It consists of a radiator with fans, a pump with a water block and two connecting tubes:

The size of the radiator is the first thing that catches your eye: it measures 275x122x25 mm. In fact, Corsair H100 is the second mainstream liquid-cooling system after Thermaltake PW880i with a radiator big enough to accommodate two 120 mm cooling fans:

We have been looking forward to the cooling system makers to do this for a long time, and finally looks like it has been done. However, Corsair decided to save some budget that is why the radiator is made of aluminum, and not copper. Besides, its actual effective “body” is only 18 mm thick, while the overall thickness is 25 mm:

True, the radiator turned out surprisingly light-weight. It is probably the lightest component of the Corsair h100 cooling system, which total weight is a little less than 1030 g.

The radiator is designed in a traditional manner - there is an aluminum corrugated band comb soldered to 14 thin heatpipes with coolant inside:

Two fittings come out of the lower part of the radiator. Two tubes 8 mm in external diameter are pressed rightly onto the fittings:

The tubes are 300 mm long. On the other end of these tubes there is a pump and water block unit with a regulator-button and indicators on top:

This unit is 68x68x40 mm big. The incoming and outgoing fittings may be turned to ensure more convenient tubing management:

There is a fan rotation speed controller built into the plastic top cover the unit. You can connect a total of four fans to it at the same time:

On the other side there is a Corsair Link connector that is used to connect this unit to the overall control and monitoring system aka Corsair Link Commander:

This is a new control system and at this time we can’t share too many details with you yet, because of very limited information that we have on hand. We will hopefully have something ready for you shortly, so please stay tuned for more.

The plastic cover is attached with clips. Below this cover there are two circuit boards responsible for pump and fans control as well as the pump itself:

The pump performance isn’t mentioned anywhere in the specs. The only thing we can say is that according to monitoring data the pump rotor rotated at 1320 RPM. It is connected to the regular PATA PSU connector and to a mainboard fan connector for rotation speed monitoring:

We don’t know much about the specifications of the water block other than its multi-channel internal structure. The copper base plate measures 60x52 mm and there is a layer of thermal paste already applied to it:

The base surface is not polished to mirror-shine, but it is impeccably even. Combined with extremely high pressure hold the cooler produces almost ideal thermal paste imprints:

I also have to add that the system is hermetically sealed and filled with a propylene glycol based coolant with an anticorrosion additive, which is guaranteed to last 5 years.

The rotation speed of these fans is set using the rotation speed controller in the pump unit and may bet 1300, 2000 or 2600 RPM. The airflow is declared to be between 46 and 92 CFM and the noise – between 22 and 39 dBA. The fan impeller is 111 mm in diameter, and the rotor – 48 mm (which is a little too big for the radiator of this cooling system). The power cable is 300 mm long. All additional cables are 295 mm long.

According to our measurements, the maximum power consumption of each fan is 4.1 W, and the startup voltage is 4.1 V. only one thing is unclear: if the Corsair H100 fan cables only have three pins, why there are four-pin connectors on the pump unit panel?